DETAILS
STARFest tickets are on sale now. With a few exceptions, all presentations will be in Forsyth Hall at the library and will cost $5. Tickets for events at the Arden Theatre are $10 each.
Tickets for all events are available through the main floor desk at the St. Albert Public Library, by calling the library at 780-459-1530, or via www.eventbrite.ca.
Full details on all presentations are available at www.STARFest.ca
The St. Albert Readers' Festival has gotten off to a strong start and shows no signs of letting up as it gets into week two. After tonight's engagement with Steven Price, local fans can expect a familiar face back up on the stage.
Angie Abdou is so regular on the STARFest that one might think she lives here. She has been here in support of her own books and as host to others with theirs. She’s on the fall book festival circuit now, so her traveling expertise has given her a bit of an edge in being on the road.
“I rarely put my suitcase away,” she admitted.
The author has also traveled some during her literary career, moving from a story of Olympic athletes (2007’s
The Bone Cage) to a variety of skiers trying to conquer a mountain in
The Canterbury Trail to her current work,
In Case I Go, just published last month.
Here, she returns to
Canterbury’s fictional setting of Coalton, but this time, she explores a more human story of a boy and his parents who have come back to the small mountain town to save their marriage. Unexpectedly, it is the town itself that is in turmoil with a high-end subdivision that has disturbed a historic graveyard. Eli, the son, abandoned in ways by his parents, turns to his friendship with a young but troubled Ktunaxa neighbour girl. Together, they face the challenges of their present that are still twisted by the mistakes and misdeeds of others from the past.
It’s heavy material, especially as we all must be mindful of the cultures being represented in our work.
“I didn’t set out to write out about Ktunaxa people and I didn’t set out to write about truth and reconciliation. That emerged in the story. In that early phase of writing, I don’t censor myself. Once I was finished, I realized that I had stumbled into some very sensitive territory. I went through quite a long process of consultation, first with my cousin who is Cree and then with the cultural liaison of the Ktunaxa Nation Council and then presenting to the elders.”
Being respectful, collaborative and consultative to the process was just as satisfying as crafting another well-told story.
“Not only was it the right thing to do but it made it a better book.”
She will make her return appearance on the STARFest stage when she is hosted by Thomas Trofimuk on Wed., Oct. 18.
A life in books
Giller winner Elizabeth Hay admits to starting on the writer’s path when she was still in her mid-teens. Since then, she has accumulated an impressive bibliography of novels, short stories, and creative non-fiction.
Her newest work,
His Whole Life, looks into a family’s complicated psychology where its members find it just as easy to hurt each other as to forgive, laugh and continue to love.
“I was very interested in writing about a boy and his mother. I’d been reading some books where there was that kind of a relationship and it didn’t seem very satisfying to me,” she remarked. “I think sometimes the bond that a mother has with a young son is incredibly strong and interesting.”
The coming of age story starts when Jim is 10 and the family is in Ontario during the mid-1990s when the Quebec referendum threatens to dissect the country. Nancy, his mother, is tried and true Canadian while his dad George is dyed in the wool American. Already the seeds of familial discord seem to have been sown in Jim’s own genetics. His acute perceptions of the world around him are what will surely endear readers to this tale.
Her STARFest appearance takes place on Fri., Oct. 20. She will be hosted by Diana Davidson.
Nothing held back for double bill
STARFest occasionally puts two authors on the same stage and this rare treat happens on Sat., Oct. 21. That’s when
Edmonton Journal writer and frequent host Paula Simons gets a chance to chat with Trevor Cole on the right and Emily Schultz on the left.
The two have new titles on the common theme of the Prohibition, a period of history rich with crime and interesting characters, not the least of which was a figure named Capone.
Cole is well known for his Leacock Humour Medal-winning novel
Practical Jean, and his other books that were nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the big IMPAC prize. So what’s a guy like that doing with
The Whisky King, a non-fiction historical piece?
“I’ve always been fascinated by the period,” he began, “but I never would have necessarily thought to do this story except that my editor approached me.”
An offer he couldn’t refuse perhaps? Maybe that’s best left unsaid.
The Whisky King veers north of Capone’s Chicago and stays strictly on this side of the bootlegging border. It’s the story of two Italian-Canadians: one is the biggest bootlegger of the era and the other is the first undercover Mountie. It sounds much like the maple leaf version of
The Untouchables, complete with larger than life people doing larger than life things.
“It’s amazing the sweep of history that these subjects cover. It’s societal forces with temperance and prohibition. It’s government corruption with smuggling that was going on, and the political people that were behind it, profiting from it, and all these other political forces … the evolution of the police really.”
Contrast that with Schultz who has a much more personal touch to her book of fiction,
Men Walking on Water, which started more with a family revelation than her lifelong love of the age of tommy guns and speakeasies.
“I had a fascination with old movies. I’ve always liked the 1920s in terms of music. But the real reason I was drawn to this topic is because my grandfather was a rum-runner and he would never talk about it,” she revealed.
“His brother – my great uncle – actually went through the ice of the Detroit River and drowned. He and his brothers were all involved in moving booze across the border. I didn’t learn that story until I was an adult. That’s why it affected me so much.”
The title of this book hints at her relative’s fate but the text itself comes across more as a
Gatsby-esque ode to characters reaching for unattainable heights, in a time of hope against hope, and with all of the expected emotional turmoil in tow.
She sure endured her own turmoil in writing it. After spending years in development, she nearly abandoned it entirely because she figured it was moot after TV mob series
Boardwalk Empire had just started its run.
Her father’s interest in the project, and her love of Gatsby, helped spur her return to writing.
“There’s no way that anyone can be as good as Fitzgerald but at the same time, I wanted to try to go into that world and capture a little bit of the same tone.”
